


Once Upon a Mattress

by cookie_full_of_arsenic



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Asexual Steve Rogers, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Platonic Cuddling, Queerplatonic Relationships, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-19 07:08:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12405516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookie_full_of_arsenic/pseuds/cookie_full_of_arsenic
Summary: A crappy old mattress. A confused sales assistant. Steve worrying about boundaries. Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. This is my first published fic, but I'm feeling more confident about it than about this godawful summary.





	Once Upon a Mattress

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the comment in CATWS about Steve not being able to sleep because his bed is too soft.
> 
> This is my first time publishing fanfic. Please be gentle!

Steve was sleeping on the floor. Or, more accurately, he wasn’t sleeping on the floor. He was tired right down to his bone marrow, but sleep just wasn’t happening. It was kind of a Goldilocks situation – his bed was too soft but the floor was too hard. Also, it was the time of night when he started to worry about everything from the ever-present possibility of nuclear war, to those tomatoes in the fridge that definitely had to be used up tomorrow, or they’d go bad.

The rattling of his mind was interrupted by a soft, snorting laugh from the doorway. “Is your bed not working?” said Bucky.  
“Nope.”  
“Maybe it’s broken. Though I can’t imagine how that happened.”  
Bucky padded across the room, crouched down and slipped under the covers of Steve’s makeshift bed. Steve scooched over automatically to make room for him.  
“I thought I’d get used to it but it’s just too … squishy. I guess I just need something more solid underneath me.”  
“Hey, can I ask you a serious question?”  
“Sure.”  
“If you weren’t asexual…”  
“Mm?”  
“Do you think you wouldn’t say so many dirty-sounding things by accident?”  
“What? What did I say?”  
Bucky just laughed and slung an arm (the flesh one) around Steve, who shifted onto his side so that Bucky could snuggle up behind him. Steve enjoyed being the little spoon, in a way that only a very big guy who used to be a very little guy could enjoy it. 

“You should come and sleep in my bed,” Bucky murmured against the back of Steve’s neck.  
“You really shoulda suggested that before you started spooning me.”  
Steve had no intention of getting up now. Bucky’s presence was as warm and soothing as a hot water bottle (the kind with the fluffy cover) and the floor suddenly seemed a lot more comfortable. His mind was quieter too, though there was one thing he had to check before he could totally relax.  
“You couldn’t sleep either, huh?”  
“Nope.”  
“Because of anything in particular, or just … the usual stuff.”  
“The usual stuff. Don’t worry.”  
The usual stuff was nothing to be sneezed at, but Bucky sounded reassuringly calm, and there was no obvious tension in his body. This was one of the dozen or so, difficult-to-explain reasons why Steve liked to be close to Bucky – it was a heck of a lot easier to tell if he was okay.

***

They fell asleep like spoons in a drawer, and woke up more like spaghetti on a plate. Sometimes they rolled apart during the night, but more often they ended up like this – an undignified mess of intertwined limbs, so that the day began with a slow, pleasant untangling. Becoming two separate people again.

“I need a new mattress,” Steve mumbled into the crook of Bucky’s elbow.  
“You do. God, why did I sleep on the damn floor with you? My neck is killing me.”  
“Do you wanna come to the store with me? Help me pick one out?”  
“Sure. Somebody’s gotta stop you getting gypped.”   
“You know, you’re not supposed to say gypped these days.”  
“Cut me some slack. I’ll be politically correct once I’ve had my coffee.”

***  
Oh yeah, this was the one. The mattress to end all mattresses. The sales assistant was still talking about space-age technology and how nine out of ten chiropractors would recommend this mattress, but Steve was in a state of bliss and only half-listening. 

Too comfortable to be self-conscious, he stretched his arms and legs out like a starfish, making sure the mattress was big enough (it better be, since this was the biggest size the store could offer). Then it occurred to him that he was unlikely to be the only person sleeping on this mattress.  
“Can I get a second opinion here?” he said, patting the mattress and moving over to make room for Bucky.  
Bucky obligingly lay down beside him, wriggled a bit and made an approving noise that was probably best described as a moan. Steve propped himself up on his elbows to ask the sales assistant for a price, and found her looking down at her shoes, blushing an alarmingly deep shade of pink. 

Steve had a vague idea of what was going through her head, and a vaguer idea of how it was affecting her. To her credit, she carried on with the sales patter.  
“One of the great things about this mattress is that there’s no roll-together. You’ll both be individually supported on either side of the bed. Unless you want to be … together, in the middle, obviously.”  
“Good to know,” said Bucky, with a distinctly devilish grin.

Feeling confident that a better mattress probably didn’t exist in any corner of the world, and wanting to save the girl from whatever inner turmoil she was going through, Steve asked her for the price. It was high, and though money wasn’t much of an issue these days, Depression-era habits die hard. He tried to haggle, but the girl insisted she couldn’t budge on the price. Though Bucky did convince her to throw in a couple of pillows. “Hotel quality”, whatever that meant.

***  
With the new mattress secured to the roof of Steve’s car with bungee cords, they set off for home. Bucky put the radio on and sang along tunelessly to Katy Perry, but Steve was strangely unsettled, and could barely hear either of them.

This nameless intimacy between him and Bucky had always been hidden. Not secret, just naturally hidden, like the parts of the body covered by underwear. It was nothing to be ashamed of, and people knew it was there. It just wasn’t shown in public. Now, it had been dragged out of their apartment, into the daylight, and Steve found himself scrutinising it in a way he never had before. 

“Bucky, can we talk?”  
Bucky turned the volume down, looking apprehensive. “You have Serious Face. What’s up?”  
“Well … nothing really, I was just thinking. Do you think you and me ought to have better boundaries?”  
“Boundaries?”  
“Boundaries. Like, physical boundaries.”  
“Is this something to do with that sales girl? Because, for the record, I’m pretty sure she wasn’t judging. I think she was just from the Midwest.”   
“She thought we were a couple.”  
“Does that bother you?”  
“I know it shouldn’t. Honestly, I think it wouldn’t bother me if I knew what we are, exactly.”  
Steve waited for Bucky to say something. He had to wait quite a while before Bucky said, “Well, we’re not a couple.”  
“So we’re just friends.”  
“Since when are we just anything?”  
“I always thought of us as friends, but friends don’t sleep together, do they? I mean, sleep in the same bed. Or on the same floor, if we’re talking about last night.”  
“Where’s this coming from? We shared a bed hundreds of times in the old days.”  
“Yeah, back when we were kids. Or when we were broke and could only afford one bed. Or in the middle of winter when I thought my teeth were gonna break, they were chattering so hard. It was different back then, people slept together because it was practical. These days, people don’t usually … snuggle with people they aren’t romantically involved with.”  
Another long silence. Then, in a very small, very embarrassed voice, Bucky said “Don’t you like it?”  
“Of course I do. But I don’t go to bed with girls. Isn’t it different for you?”  
“Look, Steve, if I’m in bed with a girl, snuggling is the last thing on my mind. I like sleeping with girls and I like sleeping with you. I don’t see what the problem is.”  
“I just think that if there aren’t any clear boundaries, things get confusing.”  
“You’re the least confusing thing in my life.” Bucky said this with such certainty that if Steve hadn’t been driving, he would’ve hugged Bucky right there and then, and probably forgotten all about the importance of boundaries. But he had to keep his hands at ten and two, and before he could think of something to say, Bucky carried on. “And don’t act like this boundaries stuff is for my benefit, or because of freakin’ social norms or something. It’s just another excuse for you to stop doing something that makes you happy. It’s like the time you tried to give up sugar.”  
“Hey, come on, it’s not the same thing at all.”  
They argued for the rest of the journey. Like most of their arguments, it strayed wildly off topic in several different directions, and by the time they were home they had resolved nothing and were both thoroughly pissed off.

***

Getting rid of Steve’s old mattress was more difficult than he’d anticipated. With super-strength, it was no more difficult to lift than a piece of toast, but a piece of toast with the proportions of a king size mattress was still pretty difficult to manoeuver through the apartment. He tried folding it in half, which promised to make things easier at first, but then he accidentally loosened his grip on it and the damn thing sprang open, flying out of his hands and halfway across the lounge. It knocked a lamp off an end table, and naturally the lamp smashed into a million pieces all over the floor. Steve said a word he’d never said before, which led him to realise that A) The argument with Bucky must have upset him more than he realised, and B) He had probably been watching too many Samuel L. Jackson movies lately.

Bucky couldn’t have helped if he wanted to, since he was shut up in his room, Skyping with Fury. He and Natasha were currently in Latvia, and Bucky was loosely involved in the mission – Steve had decided not to ask for details. He swept up the fragments of the broken lamp, threw them in the trash, then retrieved the goddamn mattress from where it had landed.

He finally managed to get it out to the dumpster, and hauled it in with satisfaction. It was then that he remembered. The memories came to him sudden and vivid, and he later wondered if that was what it was like for Bucky when he was recovering from amnesia. Bits of your past, flying at you out of the blue.

***

When Bucky first came back to Steve’s apartment, he was a bundle of bruised nerve endings and Steve was afraid to touch him. Safe, simple things like a casual pat on the back or an affectionate squeeze of the shoulder, suddenly seemed about as safe and simple as defusing a bomb. 

So it was left up to Bucky to bridge the distance between them, little by little. He moved closer to Steve when they sat on the couch, so they were no longer perched awkwardly at opposite ends. Then he initiated a brief, tentative hug after Steve talked him through a particularly bad panic attack. Then he started coming into Steve’s bedroom for a while in the evenings, while Steve was already tucked up in bed and watching or reading or researching something on his laptop. Bucky would sit on the bed, on top of the covers, and badger Steve into showing him YouTube videos of Cats vs Cucumbers (Tony was to blame for introducing Bucky to this particular meme, and to memes in general, for that matter). 

Eventually, Steve gathered up the courage to tell Bucky that he could stay, if he wanted. Evidently he did want, because he slipped under the covers and went to sleep without saying anything other than “Thanks.” It felt like a victory – the breaking down of a wall. Steve made the not-so-smart assumption that he and Bucky would be back to the way they used to be within a few nights, but of course it wasn’t that simple. Bucky slept differently now. Curled up like an armadillo with his back to Steve, his body language was as defensive as an unconscious person’s body language could possibly be. Steve had no choice but to keep strictly to his side of the bed, and try not to listen to that nagging, pessimistic voice at the back of his mind that told him he was sharing his bed with a stranger.

Then Bucky had a very bad day. One of those days when he looked exhausted but couldn’t keep still, clearly felt cooped-up but couldn’t leave the apartment, wanted to talk about it but couldn’t find the words. Steve did what he could, which wasn’t much at all. Mostly it was just watching Bucky. Checking up on him to make sure he wasn’t panicking or spiralling. Being constantly ready to help him back to the present, if he got stuck in a dangerous part of his past. 

This watchfulness continued after they went to bed, with Steve determined to stay awake until he was a hundred per cent sure that Bucky was sleeping. He kept opening his eyes, checking on the tense curve of Bucky’s shoulders, so it didn’t take him long to realise that Bucky had started to shake.

“Bucky, are you okay?” Steve whispered.   
No response.  
“Bucky, what’s wrong?”  
Bucky turned to face Steve. “I guess you wouldn’t believe me if I said I was cold.”  
“Well, it is the middle of August.”  
“Yeah.” They both stayed silent for a long moment, until Bucky added, “But could you maybe pretend to believe me?”  
And wasn’t that just the world’s dumbest question? Steve’s arms were around Bucky in an instant, holding him close. Bucky clung to Steve with something like desperation, and Steve only held him tighter, until you couldn’t have fit a piece of paper between them.  
“How’s that?” Steve murmured into Bucky’s hair. “You any warmer?”  
“Mm-hm. Much.”

***

Steve stared at the crappy old mattress at the bottom of the dumpster, and felt like a fool. Whatever it was, this closeness between him and Bucky – whatever it was called and whatever other people thought of it – it was necessary. There was no question of giving it up. He was surprised to find that he’d been right earlier, when he said it wasn’t the same as giving up sugar. No. It’d be more like giving up food.

When he went back inside, Bucky’s bedroom door was still closed. Steve stood close to it and listened for a moment, hearing nothing. When he tapped gingerly on the door, Bucky called out “Come in.”

Bucky was seated at his desk, but he swivelled round to face Steve and gave him a challenging stare. Steve returned it and said, very firmly, “I’ve decided that physical boundaries between adults should be based purely on mutual consent, and not on what society says is appropriate or inappropriate.”  
Bucky’s face creased up with laughter. “Did you read that on the internet?”  
“No, but I kinda rehearsed it in my head. I wanted to make sure I got all the right words in the right order.”  
“Well, you did. Good job.”  
“So, do you agree?”  
“Absolutely. That was pretty much my position from the beginning.”  
“Great. I’m gonna hug you now, if that’s okay.”  
“It’s okay.”

***

Naturally, Bucky had to help road-test the new mattress. “It’s a shame there wasn’t a two-for-one special,” he said, sounding half-asleep already.  
“I don’t think most families would buy two mattresses at a time.”  
“Maybe not. What are you looking at?” Bucky propped himself up on his elbows and leaned over to look at Steve’s laptop.   
“Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. This one’s pretty darn cute.”  
Steve angled the laptop towards Bucky. “So, the kid has a pet tiger? Whose idea was that?”  
“It’s not a real tiger, it’s his imaginary friend.”  
“Are you sure? ‘Cause I saw this documentary about people who keep exotic pets and you wouldn’t believe it. Lunatics letting buffalo eat at the table and all these people in the south keeping alligators as pets and stuff.”  
“Just read it.”  
Bucky read aloud, “I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart so long. If we’re in each other’s dreams we can play together all night … aww, that is pretty darn cute.”  
Steve grinned and slipped an arm around Bucky’s shoulders, pulling him closer. Bucky rested his head on Steve’s chest and said “Did you ever have an imaginary friend?”  
“Didn’t need one, I had you. Don’t think I could’ve imagined a better one.”  
“Seriously? Even now, with the weird metal arm and the PTSD and everything – you couldn’t come up with something better?”  
“Nope.”  
“Then you lack imagination.”  
“Shut up and go to sleep.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading that because I really enjoyed writing it. I wanted to write something about that messy grey area where you're in a queerplatonic relationship without knowing it and every other thought is "Is this normal?" "Is this okay?" "Is this allowed?"


End file.
